I-Macs and windows domains - few questions.

Good afternoon Forum,

well after several days of work, I've finally got my nice shiny imacs working on my domain, with an apple X-serve to apply preferences to them and image them with. So far so good, preferences are working and applying, logons are quick and everything is working fine.

However there's a few things I can't seem to figure out.

1) Is it posible to get Safari to transparently authenticate to our proxy, at the moment it prompts for a username and password when a student starts safari.

2) is it possible to mount a shared folder for all students. I've tried adding a group folder, but that doesn't seem to work - it just comes up with a question mark in the dock. Our student shared folder is shared as \\SERVER\STUSHARED$\ from a windows server

3) I applied application restrictions to the workstations, but kept getting an error 'you are not allowed to run application "student" " or something like that at login. I think the program in question may be the lanschool client, except I can't find the correct application to add to the allowed list to stop this error (I've tried searching for it) anyone have any idea where lanschool hides its self on a mac?

4) I would like to ensure the papercut client starts when the students logon, any idea how I can add an item so it starts up at login for every student?

I'm not that brilliant with macs, this is the first time I've used them on a network environment, so as simple steps as possible if anyone can help me. :)

cheers

Mike.

2.
I created an Apple script a few posts under this one that will work, just have not had much time to test it to work at login. As for showing up in the dock, you should get a folder but this is still not ideal as users can not save to this point. You want a drive to mount which is in the script I did up. Are you using Leopard 10.5.x I believe I seen the "?" issue with Leopard 10.5.x

4.
I'm not that brilliant with macs, this is the first time I've used them on a network environment, so as simple steps as possible if anyone can help me. :)

Go to "System Preferences" then Accounts. Select the account then select the "Login Items" option. Here you can add an application.

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Thanks for that reply

Since posting I've got the shared folder mounting in the dock, it's fine it being there as it's only use for distributing information to students. It seems macs don't like hidden windows shares.

However, I've just noticed something quite alarming - the macs appear to bypass the windows security somehow? When browsing the main share with all my students home folders in, it is possible to get into folders that you shouldn't be able to. This is confusing me a lot, as I've tripple checked the security on a selection of folders, and yet my student user that only has normal student rights can browse into them, and indeed read and save work to the folder. I thought initially somehow it must be using an adminitrators account or something for browsing the share with, but my file server actually reports the open session as being the student user in that folder - it's dead confusing. Any ideas???

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Originally Posted by maniac

Thanks for that reply

Since posting I've got the shared folder mounting in the dock, it's fine it being there as it's only use for distributing information to students. It seems macs don't like hidden windows shares.

However, I've just noticed something quite alarming - the macs appear to bypass the windows security somehow? When browsing the main share with all my students home folders in, it is possible to get into folders that you shouldn't be able to. This is confusing me a lot, as I've tripple checked the security on a selection of folders, and yet my student user that only has normal student rights can browse into them, and indeed read and save work to the folder. I thought initially somehow it must be using an adminitrators account or something for browsing the share with, but my file server actually reports the open session as being the student user in that folder - it's dead confusing. Any ideas???

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That's odd. Never had that issue before. I've seen where you can see other folders that are in the root of the folder your connecting to but though the users can see the other folders they can not access them.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Carter

That's odd. Never had that issue before. I've seen where you can see other folders that are in the root of the folder your connecting to but though the users can see the other folders they can not access them.

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Well I can browse into them, and save and retrieve work from them, but I can't do this in windows, it quite rightly reports I don't have the correct rights. This is now worrying me because it's a massive security flaw, and I can't work out for the life of me how it's doing it!

OK forget that one, seemed I had a group in a group in a group that had somehow applied admin priviliges to my two test student accounts which I'd never noticed before. There's other restrictions in place on the PCs to stop them gaining access to areas they're not supposed to, but the macs are a bit more open hence finding this flaw - all fixed now thou. :)

OK, we have progress.

I have most of the aspects of the macs working fine now except for 3 things, and they're all user/password related.

Firstly, it prompts for a username and password whenever someone accesses the net, which is a pain. We run Websense as our proxy - has anyone got any idea if it's possible to stop this happening by it automatically sending the credetials for the currently logged on user?

Secondly we run papercut here, and I've got the client starting at login which wasn't a problem, except it also prompts for a username and password when it is run. Anyone know if it's possible to stop this and send the credetials automatically?

Thridly, it asks for a username and password whenever you print to a shared printer, again simelar to above, is it possible to stop this?

I know you can save passwords in a keychain, but that's only as good while the password is the same - as soon as the password is shcnaged (ever 6 weeks on our domain) the saved passwords are then invalid.

Any help much appreciated - I don't really understand macs and I'm impressed I've got as far as I have.

Mike.